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Poor Rex
Looming ahead of Rita Degollar was a night from hell, heralded by the death of the cutest kitten she ever saw. She gazed down at the tiny body, twisting up her mouth. It should have made it. Helena Harper harped at Rita from up the hall, and the Vet Tech set her jaw. She shoved the cat into a dark garbage bag with a euthanized dog, and hauled the duo to the back of the clinic, yanking the walk-in freezer door open with her free right hand. Up on a metal shelf they went, not alone in the animal morgue. Every one of these unfortunates was going to a landfill Thursday morning, and Rita could only stare at them in their plastic coffins. Rita lost four puppies that night, dead in their crates, and she put down a half dozen other pets, neglected or beloved. Each time, she stood in the freezer for a little longer, taking slow breaths. She closed her eyes, but after her third deceased cat, she saw flashes of a dog, chest tearing open. After the second abused mutt, the vision-dog's eyes had rotted out of its blood-spattered face. Lunchbreak came late in the shift, but Rita spent it sitting on a crate back by the dumpster, staring out at the hot night that swarmed with swimming lights like the flies all over the dog's pink, inverted body. She pulled at her thick ponytail, imagining that her black curls were infested. The last two hours oozed by, fraught with little problems. The sinks all sputtered rusty water, every thermometer in the building had dead batteries at the same time. There was a 3am roadkill rush, but she spent her remaining ten minutes staring at a clock, certain it was ticking backward. The slouching front desk Harpy suggested from her chair--as the shaking scrubs-clad girl knelt and reached behind a box for her purse--that Rita stay another couple hours, since Stephen called in. Rita stammered out a story to excuse herself, tripping once on her way out the double doors. She needed fuel on the way home, and took an odd exit off the highway, trying to recall the location of a certain cheap station, still battling mental images of flies and guts. She drove longer than she thought she should have had to, and turned onto a road darker than what she thought was right. She found a gas station anyway, though it wasn't the right one, across the street from a motel. Even at 4am, the heat was stifling when she opened her door, and the car's beeping alarm startled her. When she stepped over, the pump flashed "SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED" at her. The words hit her face and slid down her arms. Shoes ground against gravel somewhere near, and her heart thundered in fright. "You havin' some trouble, miss?" Said a cheery old man. A hand touched her shoulder, and her whole body seized up. The dog's name was Rex. Fingers shoved into Rex's chest and wrenched out the canine heart stuffed full of writhing white worms. It slapped onto a felt blanket in the baby's crib. Maggots devoured Rex's eyes as he bled and stared at the man smashing springs into his organ. He saw the old man's smile stretch up to his temples. Rex felt the blade smash his muzzle and cut it off his face. He knew the pain of his jaw being ripped from his skull, paws clawed off his forelegs. He could do nothing as the Fae speared his brain with cold steel to fit it onto the gory golem. Rex died, and Replacement Rita was born. She was still convulsing, eyes rolled back in her head. She could do all that to animals, too. She could control them, rip them apart and slap them back together. She could tear tools out of mirrors. She could feed on horror. "N-n-, s-stop!" Whined a stuttering girl that sounded Other. Fake. He was pulling her hair. "I suppose I should tell ya, then, that I let her loose," Mused the Samaritan motel owner. "P-please, nnn-n-no!" Replacement Rita stared at the flickering lights above her and at all the arcane diagrams flashing in her mind. The Head-Taker was free, he said. "I told her she couldn't come back, not 'less she brought you with her." The Head-Taker was coming for her, to kill her and drag her to Hell. "N-no more, no more!" But it was already done. She was seeing herself, strobing between a stuttering human and a grotesque machine. She knew how she was going to put that cute little kitten back together. "I think that's near-about the gist of things." He let go of her hair, and shaking, sputtering, sobbing Replacement Rita sank into the bed where her car should have been. "Anyway," The man ran a hand along the wall of her dark bedroom, wiping the other on his blue coveralls, as if Replacement Rita's hair was sticky. "No need to thank me for the ride home, that's just what good neighbors do for each other. I'll be seein' you." Continued in The False One Characters involved in this Chronicle: Rita Degollar Category:Fiction